The difference between eBay\x0d\and Amazon\x0d\\x0d\E-commerce open platform: Amazon’s future\x0d\Amazon is the most successful e-commerce company in the world. In terms of platform openness, Amazon began its layout as early as 1999, and officially launched the Marketplace service in 2001. In 2002, it expanded the service to the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. In 2003, it added Canada and France. So far, nearly 50% of its US main website’s transaction volume comes from Marketplace. , Marketplace has also changed from its original defensive purpose to its current strategic core. The development history of Amazon Marketplace Amazon Marketplace is divided into three development stages: the defense eBay stage, the FBA stage, and the KDP stage. Defense against eBay stage (1999-2006): In order to compete with eBay, Amazon launched the Amazon Auctions (Amazon\x0d\Auctions) business in March 1999; in September of the same year, Amazon released the zShop service, extending the personal auction business to small and medium-sized merchants , allowing them to open a store on zShops\x0d\, display and sell their goods. In November 2000, Amazon launched Marketplace, a third-party open platform based on the integration of auction and zShops businesses. In the first stage, Amazon opened up hastily. The important purpose was to defend against eBay, which was developing more rapidly. However, Amazon Marketplace lacked the support of supporting facilities. In addition, it had a small number of users and insufficient management experience for merchants. In the following years, Amazon Marketplace has not grown. As for the publicity that "Amazon Marketplace orders accounted for 15% of Amazon.com's total orders in the fourth quarter of 2001", there is quite a lot of water in it. FBA stage (2006-2010): In 2006, Amazon's market value began to exceed eBay's, and its high-quality heavy model began to gain an advantage over eBay; in terms of platform opening, Amazon launched two key services in September 2006: WebStore \x0d\byAmazon and FBA (FulfillmentbyAmazon). The first service allows merchants to use Amazon's technology to create their own independent e-commerce websites in the form of POWEREDBY\x0d\Amazon and WEBSTOREBY\x0d\Amazon. Amazon's hardware and software resources are provided to third parties for a fee, including To third-party e-commerce websites, this provides technical support for the development of open platforms. The second measure has a greater impact on the development of the open platform and directly solves warehousing and logistics problems for sellers. Amazon uses this service to put its open platform business on the track of rapid development. KDP stage (2010-present): In January 2010, Amazon launched DTP (Kindle Digital Text\x0d\Platform), the predecessor of KDP (Kindle\x0d\DirectPublishing). Authors or publishing organizations can sell books directly on the Amazon platform; in November of the same year, Amazon launched Amazon\x0d\Studios to attract producers and screenwriters to sell their works through its platform. This marks that Amazon's open platform has entered a new stage of development, expanding from physical goods to digital products. At the same time, Amazon’s FBA service has developed and improved over the past few years, and more and more merchants have begun to use this service. By the end of 2012, Amazon had approximately 2 million active merchants; currently, Amazon’s transaction volume from the open platform accounts for nearly 50% of its main US site. The transaction volume of Amazon Marketplace is about half that of eBay platform, but the quality of its merchants is significantly higher, and it is expected to surpass eBay in the next few years.

Amazon Marketplace is "widespread and strict" Amazon Marketplace as a whole belongs to the B2B2C model, which is different from eBay's C2C model. Except for the auction method in the earliest days, it has always adopted fixed price sales. For Amazon, its initial launch of Marketplace was somewhat out of defensive considerations. However, in the process of development, in addition to giving consumers more and wider choices, Marketplace has gradually become a way for Amazon to improve gross profit and profitability due to its light model. The most important direction. Generally speaking, Amazon Marketplace adopts a "lenient and strict management" approach, and both individuals and businesses can open stores on its platform. Enterprise merchants need to pay a monthly fixed service fee of US$39.99, and subsequent commissions and other fees are the same as those of individual sellers. The difference is that enterprise merchants can sell more products in more categories. For individual sellers who sell less than 40 products per month, they do not need to pay a fixed monthly service fee. They only need to pay a "listing fee" of US$0.99 for each product to keep the product online until it is sold. out. It should be said that the entry threshold for Amazon Marketplace is very low. It has more than 20 categories that are completely open to the outside world, and there are no qualification requirements for sellers. For other categories, you need to apply to Amazon after meeting certain conditions, but the overall requirements are not high; Moreover, Amazon also allows sellers to sell used or repaired products. Amazon Marketplace has low barriers to entry, but its management of sellers is not lax. Whether individual sellers or corporate sellers, they must abide by Amazon's comprehensive guarantee terms (A-to-z\x0d\Guarantee\x0d\program). If buyers' rights are infringed, they will receive comprehensive support from Amazon. Marketplace ensures the same quality as self-operated. A big problem with self-operated B2C as an open platform is that it cannot guarantee that the quality of the open platform is consistent with self-operated, thus reducing consumers' favorability of the entire platform. Since its establishment, Amazon has attached great importance to user reputation and is unwilling to sacrifice quality in order to increase transaction volume. For this reason, Amazon requires sellers to provide A-Z guarantee services and strives to make the open platform achieve the quality and brand image of its own business. Unlike eBay and domestic e-commerce open platforms, which are store-centered, Amazon's open platform adopts a product-centered structure. Amazon does not create a special second-level domain name for sellers. The homepage (Storefront) of most stores is the product list page, downplaying the store and ensuring a unified brand image of the Amazon platform. In addition, Amazon Marketplace tries to be as depersonalized as possible when displaying product information, especially for some standardized products. Each seller uses a unified detailed introduction page. The information on this page generally follows the brand manufacturer's introduction to the product; there is a unified The product details page can save sellers a lot of work, reduce the possibility of sellers promoting transactions through false introductions, and guide sellers to focus their time and energy on internal capabilities such as price, delivery, and after-sales. The development advantages of Amazon Marketplace. Pu Ge mentioned in a previous article that the key factors that determine whether the open platform can be implemented include website traffic, warehousing logistics, payment methods, technical strength, ecological construction, etc. Amazon has obvious advantages in each link. advantages. In terms of traffic, Amazon pioneered the website alliance (Amazon\x0d\Associates) as early as 1996, allowing other websites to share the traffic imported by Amazon. Its alliance almost includes mainstream Internet websites; and Amazon can attract users through high-quality services. After accumulation, a positive cycle is gradually formed; currently, the website traffic of Amazon’s main website ranks sixth in the world, and its user quality is quite good, which is very attractive to third-party sellers. In terms of warehousing and logistics, Amazon's advantages are even more obvious. The Prime service launched in 2005 can achieve two-day delivery; with warehousing centers spread across the United States, Amazon can now achieve one-day delivery of goods.

Its FBA service open to sellers can not only reduce costs for sellers, but also ensure the consistency of Amazon's quality, which is quite attractive to both sellers and buyers. In terms of payment methods and technical strength, Amazon has its own payment service Amazon \ It is one of the most important players, and its advanced warehousing system technology has always been the object of study by major e-commerce companies. In addition, Amazon attaches great importance to cash flow and has strong financial strength. It can complete settlement with sellers in 14-21 days. The account period is short, and it is welcomed by sellers. Challenges of Amazon Marketplace Compared with eBay, Amazon is slightly behind in payment and mobile terminal development. eBay's Paypal is a more commonly used third-party payment tool, especially in cross-border e-commerce, Paypal's advantages are more obvious. Amazon's global selling (Globe\x0d\Selling) business has never really developed, and the lack of good payment methods is an important reason. On the mobile side, Amazon currently mainly uses the Kindle series of products to sell digital products, and its physical product sales on the mobile side do not account for a high proportion of the overall sales. When user shopping behavior shifts from PC to mobile, eBay becomes a major trend. Amazon has been a bit bleaker on this front, leveraging mobile performance to drive up its stock price. Amazon has solved the problem of mutual exchange between left and right hands to a great extent, but it has not completely handled its relationship with third-party sellers. The Amazon Marketplace gives sellers too little control, and the final competition between sellers is price. In addition, Amazon will expand the categories of self-operated business based on the data of the open platform, which will lead to conflicts between self-operated business and third-party sellers. In competition, Amazon acts as both a contestant and a referee, which will inevitably cause dissatisfaction among some sellers. eBay has no self-operated business, and its competition with offline retailers is relatively small; when Amazon is growing rapidly, many offline traditional retailers are dissatisfied with Amazon, and eBay takes the opportunity to penetrate offline. A typical example is Milo, a local shopping search company owned by eBay, which imports the data of offline retailers to help them sell online. Once an order is placed, eBay sends people to pick up the goods offline through "eBay\x0d\Now" and provides same-day delivery services. , thus forming an alliance of interests with offline merchants, which can threaten Amazon to a certain extent. (End)